One of the hallmark signs for diabetes mellitus is increased thirst. The disease is associated with a lack of normal insulin production, which leads to elevated blood sugar. With this increase in sugar within the blood, there is a stimulus to drink more water to try to balance out the osmotic pressure in the blood. When this disease is unregulated, patients will drink almost constantly. Correspondingly, they also will have to urinate more.

Also common with diabetic patients is an increase in appetite. This is because the blood sugar is not being utilized by the body due to lack of insulin and, thus, the body thinks it is starving.

Honda is a 12-year-old cat whose world is made up of multiple rooms full of large objects that his caretakers pay much more attention to than does he. He does have areas of interest, especially his food dish, which is kept full most of the time, and when on those rare times he finds it empty, he has trained Teresa to fill it upon his demonstration to her of the need.

For the past few weeks, water has become much more important to Honda. He is at the water bowl much of the time, and Teresa reports having to fill it sometimes four times in a day; in the past, he would hardly finish half a bowl. Over this same period, Honda has become much less interested in his food, and Teresa is at the point now where she has been changing foods every three or four days to try to get Honda to eat.